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iTWire's telecommunications expert, Stuart Corner, also has his own take on the 30-year anniversary along with a fascinating anecdote about Australia's 250,000th analog AMPS mobile phone subscriber that you should read for yourself!
There was even a commercial mobile telephone service in the US city of St Louis in 1946, with a more advanced version coming out in 1964, bring more channels and automated connections.
It wasn't until the 60s and 70s that the work was done to enable the beginnings of the analogue mobile market that has evolved into the 3G/NextG and now 4G/LTE networks that have started arriving.
Australia's journey to today's world of mobile phones outnumbering people in Australia started definitively on August 9, 1981, when the first Australian mobile call was made.
It was done using a now ancient but then ultra-modern in-car phone, which was ultra anti-Zoolanderesque at a whopping 14 kilos, had a humongous 45cm handset, and cost $5000 dollars form 1981, which Telstra says is $17,000 in 2011 dollars.
Not only is that a heck of a lot of inflation we can thank our successive governments for not preventing, it's the equivalent of at least 17 32GB iPhone 4 handsets at AUD $999 each, or 22 if you buy them from Hong Kong at HKD $5888, which at today's GFC Mark II-depressed exchange rate is AUD $746 a pop - up from $700 only last week.
Naturally, phone coverage back in 1981 was a fly speck compared with today's 2.1m square kilometre-covering Next G network, but it did at least cover 'the greater Melbourne area' at first, which was still quite a bit of a major Australian city at the time.
Sydney was connected in December 1981, Brisbane joined the mobile bandwagon in 1983 with the rest of Australia's capital cities joining mobility city by 1985.
There were no laws against using mobile phones in cars then either, because that was the whole point - you could only, at first, install one in a car. Being 1981, it had the height of 1981 technology within - the storage of a huuuuuge 16 numbers in what was obvious a massive 16 number database.
1981 technology was sending Space Shuttles to orbit around the earth, too, but 16 numbers wasn't just a big deal in those days, it was the only deal - plus you obviously had to have your own written phone/address book or just a good memory if there were more than 16 people you wanted to call while on the go.
The phone even had the equivalent of a 'silent mode' - with either your car's horn set to honk in the event of an incoming call, or alert you silently with the flashing of your car's headlights.
Telstra's Executive Director of Networks and Access Technologies, Mike Wright, was a 'graduate engineer' in 1981, and by 1985 was overseeing 'installation of the first mobile network exchange in Brisbane.'
Mr Wright said: 'Back in 1981 I never imagined there would be more mobile devices in Australia than people, and that they could be used to watch live TV, someday feature 3D content and become a critical way to how we connect.
'We called the first Telstra network the 007 Network because that was the number range it used and while in today's terms it was more like a 'Zero-G' network, it was the foundation of Australia's modern mobile phone industry. In just 30 years we're now building a 4G network, that's five generations of mobile evolution so far in my career', concluded Mr Wright.
Continued on page two, please read on!
